Rebuilding that which has been lost
I've decided to start this in the hopes that I will be able to keep my motivation up for the long road ahead.
Some background to put this in perspective, I have been a competitive martial artist for a great deal of my life. Some have called me the king of bizarre accidents and injuries but life goes on. I adapted but each one left me less than I was. My worst injury was a severe hamstring tear that took over 5 years to rehab, which I think directly related to my second hamstring tear on the other side. The result is from 300lb hamstring curls I am probably only able to do 80 or so now.
My fastest mile was 5 minutes flat and I ran 3 miles a night for years before the hamstring tear. After that running stopped.
Several years ago I decided to leave teaching martial arts as a career behind. So after 15 years of running my school I took on a desk job.
And basically I went insane. 18 hour days, sometimes 7 days a week, no time for anything so I would drink soda for fuel and to stay awake, I got up to drinking a case of soda a day, 24 cans.
I went for 160lbs to 230 in 6 months. None of it good.
I left that life behind a few years ago, and bought a commercial gym, with the idea that I would get into shape and regain my life previous lifestyle. But in the end I found that it wasn't easy to run the place and get my workouts in. So after a few years I sold it and went back to the corporate world.
Then I ended up needing brain surgery. That set my plans back quite a bit. The first time I did 10 pushups it put me out of commission for nearly a week. I was astounded.
As I picked up my martial arts training I haven't lost much weight I've only gotten bigger, not fatter though.
I started trying to make some modifications to my diet and routine a few weeks ago. At the beginning these were my stats.
I'm 5' 8" and was 240 lbs.
By the time I took my first set of measurements I was down to 230.
Calves 16.50
Thighs 24.50
Hips 46.00
Wrist 7.00
Waist 43.00
Forearms 12.50
Upper Arms 15.00
Chest 48.00
Shoulders 51.00
Neck 15.50
As of today I weighed in at 224. But it fluctuates pretty wildly from day to day.
I am trying to get organized enough to keep logs like John did, but it's going to be tough. My job plus my commute takes up 12 hours of my day. Luckily I can usually do pretty well with 5-6 hours of sleep otherwise I'd have no time at all.
Even though I've been in fitness most of my life, I find I don't really know what I need to for my own plan. I'm a walking contradiction when it comes to just about everything.
I cut out drinking soda for a month and I gained weight. I have cut out almost all soda from my diet for the last couple weeks. Except for a spurge at the movies on friday.
My diet pretty much had to change but it is a major challenge because I have lived a great deal of my life eating once a day, sometimes twice. The change up to eating more often is very difficult.
Breakfast seems to be the most difficult. I ate 3 oz of egg whites and a cup of red potatoes cooked in olive oil for breakfast last week, and I'm already getting sick of eggs. So I am going to have to come up with some alternatives and fast. This week I'm going to be still eating eggs and grapefruit and potatoes.
I also bought some wonder smart bread and have been eating peanut butter and natural preserves sandwiches for lunch. Or bags of beef jerky.
Diet is tough because if I don't like something I will burn out on it super fast and then just won't eat at all. Right now I'm really struggling to find a protein substitute for breakfast.
I also found this new Crystal light stuff that doesn't have artificial sweeteners in it. Maybe not the best but I don't drink enough plain water so I need something to help. It's only 15 calories per cup of water. Not great but better than Mt. Dew. Baby steps.
Most people may already know this but many things you taste are influenced by your genetics. While fascinating it has also led me to find out through a college biology class that I react negatively to a lot of preservatives and such at other people do not taste at all. Pretty much all artificial sweeteners fall in this category. Stevia, splenda, aspartame, etc all taste pretty bad so I avoid them.
This is what makes my diet so tricky, most of my intake is beef. Mostly london Broil, round steak and fillet. never been one to eat the fat, so any that I can see I cut off. I will eat chicken but I'm not a fan, often I'll end up eating my meal and have of my chicken portion will be sitting there because I just don't want any more. I'll eat turkey from a rotisserie or roasted, pretty much any other way is just not going to happen. And I will pretty much eat all vegetables.
until recently I was eating out 7 days a week. Over the last few weeks I've tried to eat at home and cook, but it's a time issue and it's hit and miss.
I thought if I got down to about 170 lbs. I'd be doing pretty good, but honestly I don't know anymore. After taking my measurements and feeding it into every calculator I could find, most of them said I only had 50 lbs of fat to begin with. So if I lost 50 lbs of fat to get to 170 i'd be dead. Not convinced they are all that accurate but figured I'd shoot for 170 and see what happens.
I'm not a body builder, I hate lifting weights, I don't like the weakness afterwards. I'd rather spar full contact for an hour than lift for 20 minutes. In fact I'd rather spar for 4 hours than lift. But I'm going to start lifting and hope that I can do it in a way that will be beneficial to me and at the same time be something I can stick with.
So taking my time limitations I decided the only way that would happen is to set up a gym at my house. I bought a commercial spin bike because I need to get my cardio up before I even think about running again and I need it to be handy otherwise I'm just not going to do it. After a couple months of being too cold, then to wet, then to hot, something indoors seemed to be the best option.
I also picked up a decent bench, some olympic weights, dumbbells, and at my girlfriends request a bowflex. She is also wanting to work out at home.
I'm going to do several weeks of light lifting to get everything used to it, I have to many odd weak spots to jump into heavy lifting. I'd just end up with tendinitis if I tried that. Only have been able to do 15 minutes of steady state riding on the bike, so I've got a ways to go.
So this week I'm planning on working out every day, we will see how that goes, I some how managed to injury my wrist and my opposite hand in sparring today, but I'm hoping that won't be an issue. It's pretty mild and may be just some tweaks that will be gone by tomorrow.
I'm trying to get everything in planned so that I can not only recover some strength and some lost ability, but also get rid of the excess weight I'm carrying. I'm not fit enough at present for me to take myself as a martial artist seriously. I get by not on my attributes but on skill and strategy, which has made me lazy.
Anyway, that's all for tonight One huge rambling post. Any comments, suggestions etc are always appreciated.
So let's see if I can really make things happen by the end of this year. Lots of new habits to create, lots of old ones to overwrite.
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